Woah, calm down. Merely a facetious eyebrow-raising.
I mentioned developers’ requirement to conform with safety standards, roads, etc. I could add in planning regulation, sewerage, environmental legislation too. Yeah, affordable housing is the subject of the thread, but all those things are a) absorbed into the overheads of developers at the planning stage, and b) local government legislation for the good of the local community. If we’re going to go macroeconomic, why not mention/rail against these, in terms of, for example, developer-subsidised sewerage distorting the effluent market?
I’ll take the first two on the chin, and indeed I don’t know the situation in Toronto, but my remarking that affordable housing in developments here in the UK has had no detrimental effect on property developers was also ignored. The housing market is booming here, has been for years, and developers are making money hand over fist, despite the requirement to conform to one of many legislative requirements. As I said, if they don’t want to buid 'em, they don’t have to compete.
A developer looks at opportunities in the light of local authority requirements and chooses whether or not to bid for the development. I see the parallel between affordable housing and other legislation, even if others can’t - hence my facetious question.
Regardless of Sam or your emotional response to poor people, the inevitable result of almost any argument you make wrt economics is to harm poor people and favor rich people. Point is, for all the difference it makes, you and Sam and most free market advocates might as well hate poor people.
In many cases, the shortage you are mentioning is the result of the diminishing supply of building sites. As towns are built out, the remaining lots tend to get McMansions and the like, and those looking for affordable housing get pushed far away. So, the alternatives tend to be all luxury houses, or some affordable houses and the rest slightly more expensive luxury houses. It’s not at all clear that the average price will change at all - the median price and the distribution of prices will. Consider it a form of progressive taxation if you will.
The real justification for this is that governments must consider the social costs of new development. In my town, we prevent developers from building on the hills, since the majority of residents consider quality of life better not having to look at a carpet of mansions. This is the same justification, really, for zoning laws and requiring builders to contribute to the new roads, schools and sewage plants required for their new developments. Many towns want a mix of residents. I wonder if Ft. Lauderdale has a requirement for city employees to live in city limits?
Builders go belly up all the time - but mostly from misjudging the market and over-extending themselves. I’ve never heard of any going bankrupt from affordable housing - the rules are usually known in advance, and the decision to buy land for houses can be made based on this.
Even if what you say about free market policies harming poor people is true—and i don’t believe that it is, at least not in all cases—there’s still an important distinction to be made between disliking poor people, on the one hand, and advocating policies that may disadvantage them on the other.
Particularly with respect to libertarians, i believe that this notion of being indifferent to poor people is fundamentally misguided. I went to a small conference last month, sponsored by the Liberty Fund and attended almost exclusively by libertarians. There was basically just me and one other guy holding up the social democrat banner. And every single one of these people showed a high level of sympathy for people at the bottom of the socio-economic scale, and a real interest in improving their lot.
The libertarians i’ve encountered in my life have nearly always been perfectly willing to discuss government intervention in the economy, and almost never dismiss it out of hand. And, indeed, some very important libertartian thinkers like F.A. Hayek do, in fact, acknowledge that there can be a positive role for government in alleviating distress and addressing issues of inequality. So did Adam Smith.
Even when i disagree with libertarians about the consequences of particular policies, i think that they are, for the most part, really motivated by genuine beliefs about what works best for society as a whole. If i have one problem with some libertarians, it is that they have been willing to ignore incursions into social and political freedoms by conservative governments, as long as those governments make the right noises regarding taxation and economic pollicy. But even this has changed, and of the libertarians i know (including those i’ve come into contact with on this message board) more supported the Democrats than the Republicans in the last Presidential election.
If i have one major problem with the general tone of some of these arguments over economic policy—and it emerges a little bit in posts like RickJay’s, above—it is what seems to be an assumption about the nature of government on the part of some people. Some free market advocates look at government and, whenever something is less than perfect, they decry it as typical government waste or inefficiency and use that as an argument to get rid of it altogether. For such folks, every minor or major problem of government is endemic and unfixable.
And yet some of these same people, when confronted with problems in the private sector, whether the inequalities or distortions of the free market, or corruption and criminal issues like Enron, shrug it off as an aberration, something that shouldn’t reflect on the system as a whole. We are told that, as long as these few bad eggs are removed from the basket, everything will be fine. Hell, we had some people tell us with a straight face a few years ago that incidents such as Enron and WorldCom were proof that the free market works. After all, those accounting firms like Arthur Andersen (oops, Accenture) sure did pay for their malfeasance. :rolleyes:
All i ask is that some of these people apply the same, er, optimism when it comes to government. While i acknowledge that there are certain inefficiencies and problems that are more likely to occur in government programs than in private enterprise, i firmly believe that, as a human institution amenable to input and change, government can be made better than it is, and that some of the problems involved with government departments can be removed or ameliorated without doing away with government altogether.
For that post, following the romantic example set by Weirddave, I’m asking mhendo to marry me. (If you’re female, we can do it here in the Netherlands, where it’s legal. )
Of course a shortage results as towns get “built out”. There are lots of things that limit the supply the housing. I just don’t understand why we would purposely want to create yet another supply reducing cause, since the purported reason for this government action is to address the problem of high housing costs. If the government tried to address the high cost of gas by requiring gas stations to sell 10% of their product at “below market rates” to poor people, what would happen to the cost of gas for the rest of us, and would anyone think that was a good way to deal with the problem? I doubt it.
Elvis: Yes, I hate poor people and take joy in watching them suffer. You finally found me out. Damn, I was hoping to fool everyone just a little longer.
I can understand why one would be loathe to favor mandating developers to provide affordable housing, using the reasoning that it interferes with the market. But haven’t all the rich folks already done that? Why isn’t driving prices into the stratosphere with demand in excess of customary local needs considered interfering with the market? If they can tell middle class people to get a second job to afford to pay their mortgage, why can’t they tell the rich folks to hire their own public works and staff the Wal Mart themselves?
Perhaps you would care to elaborate on what you mean by “harm poor people”. It might help me undrestand where you’re coming from, because other posters in this thread have done a good job of illustrating how government interference can cause a great deal of harm to those very same poor people you want to “help” (help what, BTW)
What do you think “the market” is? It’s just people buying and selling things. IOW, what you are calling an interference with the market is the market. BTW, what is the “customary” price of a home?
I don’t think anyone is defending the mayor’s inflamatory remarks. However, I’m not sure what you’re getting at. Rich people pay a lot of taxes. Are you saying they don’t deserve to get any services for those taxes? I’m not sure what the point about WalMart is. If you’re serious about that statement, can you clarify what you mean?
But in the very same post you’re referring to, you can see I’m not saying that at all; I’m just advising DIRECT subsidies, rather than indirect ones. I’m the guy in this thread who’s saying he wants to take tax money from rich people and give it to poor people.
That’s right. They are.
Government is inefficient; deal with it. In some cases, however, government is necessary, because collective action can and does deal with externalities that the market doesn’t deal with; there are areas where the inefficiency of government is the preferable option. To use an example that popped up up thread, it’s perfectly reasonable to ask developers to subsidize the installation of sewer systems. A sewer system is a public good; it’s not something that is (easily) built or paid for in the open market, largely because the good it provides is, for the most part, a collective one, not one that you can assign to individuals. Avoiding an outbreak of typhoid isn’t something you can buy at Target on an individual basis.
Neither I not Sam nor John Mace are pretending the free market is a perfect thing and that we can do away with government and live in Ayn Rand’s utopia. Nobody’s said anything of the sort (in this thread, anyway.) If you wait for the open market to build sewer systems, freeways, a professional armed forces and a justice system, you’re going to be waiting a very long time. But the free market DOES build houses.
Weirddave: I’m married, but if you look like George Clooney, we can talk.
Right, but you still seem to be arguing that any problems we find with government, as it stands now, are permanent and irreparable.
No, they’re not. Repeating it doesn’t make it true.
It may be that some government problems and inefficiencies are inherent in the system, and can’t be fixed, but other problems and inefficiencies can be fixed, or at least improved or alleviated.
Of course, even efficiency can be measured in a variety of different ways.
For example, according to this testimony, given in front of the US Senate (pdf), the administrative costs of private health insurance in America in 2001 were 11.9% of outlays, while in the public system (Medicare/Medicaid) administrative costs were 4.6%.
Of course, the private outlays include profit and commissions and reserves, and some might argue that sustaining the private insurance industry is, in itself, a measure of efficiency. But others might argue that a more reasonable measure of the efficiency of a health system is what percentage of outlays actually gets spent on health care.
You’re not fooling anybody. I don’t think you or Sam Stone hate poor people or take joy in watching them suffer. I just note that, in following the free market absolutist line, you consistently oppose any policies that might help the poor and the middle class, and support policies that help the wealthy. I am sure that you honestly believe that such policies help the poor by keeping the economy in general robust. I do not share your belief. I’m just saying, when you oppose rent subsidies and support outsourcing, and support cutting taxes for the wealthy, and oh, the jillion and one things that urestrained free market advocates do, you argue just exactly as one might expect someone who has a deep hatred of the poor and middle class to do.
But the relationship between taxing and spending is not as straightforward as you suggest here. In fact, William Niskanen, chairman of the Cato Institute (someone whose free market credentials should not be in doubt), recently completed a study of the last 25 years of US government taxation and budget numbers, and concluded that the Republican strategy of “starving” government by reducing taxation has actually tended to have the opposite effect.
Of course, as the author of the article points out in his conclusion, Republicans can’t afford to even acknowledge these issues, let alone address them properly, because they have spent the past quarter century hitching their wagon to the idea that tax cuts are the panacea for big government.
Here is a link to the complete article, but you have to be an Atlantic Monthly subscriber to read past the second paragraph.
I was hoping that Niskanen’s study might have made it onto the Cato website, but i can’t find it there anywhere.
You’re going to have to explain how this contradicts anything I said. I’m not a Republican. When have I expressed any support for their “fiscal policy,” such as it is?
What I am saying is very straightforward, and it’s unquestionably true; over time, the government will take in more tax money, and spend more. The notion of “spending cuts” or “starving the government” is laughable nonsense; the government taxes more and spends more money than it did seven years ago, ten years ago, twenty years ago, or over any significant period you care to mention, full scale wars excepted. Federal outlays keep going up, even adjusting for inflation and population growth. If you don’t believe me, look it up.
Now you’re going to have to explain how that contradicts anything i’ve said.
I was merely offering some additional data. If you feel the need to take it personally, or to imply that it means that i don’t know how much the government taxes and spends, knock yourself out.
BrainGlutton, I think it’s not better nor worse: simply emphasizing that the mayor is a jerk of the first water. But when the original pitting included a call for action to vote the jerk out of office…
<shrug>
Just seems a bit on the redundant side.
Frankly, I’m not trying to get involved in the interesting debate going on about the pros and cons of affordable housing and whether and how the government might provide or encourage that. (Even though it seems to have been my questions on the topic that started the hijack we’ve got going on.) I can see arguments for both sides, and I don’t think there was enough information in the original article linked by the OP to make any kind of informed judgement. Depending upon the details of the specific plan (which needs must include more than just the cost to the developers) involved I might be in favor of it, or just as opposed as the mayor.
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